The Lady of the Rivers

Jacquetta always has had the gift of second sight. As a child visiting her uncle, she met his prisoner, Joan of Arc, and saw her own power reflected in the young woman accused of witchcraft. They share the mystery of the tarot card of the wheel of fortune before Joan is taken to a horrific death. Jacquetta understands the danger for a woman who dares to dream. Jacquetta is married to the Duke of Bedford, English regent of France, and he introduces her to a mysterious world of learning and alchemy.

The Women of the Cousins' War: The Duchess, the Queen and the King's Mother

In her essay on Jacquetta, Philippa Gregory uses original documents, archaeology and histories of myth and witchcraft to create the first-ever biography of the young duchess who was to survive two reigns and two wars to become the first lady at two rival courts. David Baldwin, established author on the Wars of the Roses, tells the story of Elizabeth Woodville, the first commoner to marry a king of England for love, and Michael Jones, fellow of the Royal Historical Society, writes of Margaret Beaufort, the almost-unknown matriarch of the House of Tudor. The Women of the Cousins’ War will appeal to all.

The Lady Elizabeth: A Novel

Best-selling author Alison Weir turns her masterly storytelling skills to the early life of young Elizabeth Tudor, who would grow up to become England's most intriguing and powerful queen. Sweeping in scope, The Lady Elizabeth is a fascinating portrayal of a woman far ahead of her time - whose dangerous and dramatic path to the throne shapes her future greatness.

Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World

Many are familiar with the story of the much-married King Henry VIII of England and the celebrated reign of his daughter, Elizabeth I. But it is often forgotten that the life of the first Tudor queen, Elizabeth of York, Henry's mother and Elizabeth's grandmother, spanned one of England' s most dramatic and perilous periods. Now New York Times best-selling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir presents the first modern biography of this extraordinary woman.

Six Tudor Queens: Katherine of Aragon, the True Queen

The lives of Henry VIII's queens make for dramatic stories, and Alison Weir writes a series of novels that offer insights into the real lives of the six wives based on extensive research and new theories. In all the romancing, has anyone regarded the evidence that Anne Boleyn did not love Henry VIII? Or that Prince Arthur, Katherine of Aragon's first husband, who is said to have loved her, in fact cared so little for her that he willed his personal effects to his sister?

The Six Wives of Henry VIII

This acclaimed best seller from popular historian Alison Weir is a fascinating look at the Tudor family dynasty and its most infamous ruler. The Six Wives of Henry VIII brings to life England’s oft-married monarch and the six wildly different but equally fascinating women who married him. Gripping from the first sentence to the last and loaded with fascinating details, Weir’s rich history is a perfect blend of scholarship and entertainment.

The Summer Queen: Eleanor of Aquitaine Trilogy, Book 1

Eleanor of Aquitaine's story deserves to be legendary. She is an icon who has fascinated readers for over 800 years. But the real Eleanor remains elusive - until now. Based on the most up-to-date research, award-winning novelist Elizabeth Chadwick brings Eleanor's magnificent story to life, as never before, unveiling the real Eleanor. Young, golden-haired and blue-eyed Eleanor has everything to look forward to as the heiress to wealthy Aquitaine.

Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey

The child of a scheming father and ruthless mother, Lady Jane Grey is born during a time when ambition dictates action. Cousin to Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, she is merely a pawn in a political and religious game in which one false step means a certain demise. But Lady Jane has remarkable qualities that help her to withstand the constant pressures of the royal machinery far better than most expect.

The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn

Robin Maxwell’s debut novel introduces Anne Boleyn and her daughter, Elizabeth: one was queen for a thousand days, the other for more than 40 years. Both were passionate, headstrong women, loved and hated by Henry VIII. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, her mother’s private diary is given to her by a mysterious lady. In reading it, the young ruler - herself embroiled in a dangerous love affair - discovers a great deal about her much maligned mother.

A Dangerous Inheritance

Historian and New York Times best-selling author Alison Weir is acclaimed for her absorbing works about the infamous House of York and House of Tudor lines. In A Dangerous Inheritance, Weir uses her wealth of knowledge to craft a compelling novel about two women, living 70 years apart, who are linked through the mysterious disappearance of King Richard III's nephews, Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury - also known as the Princes in the Tower.

The Lost Tudor Princess: The Life of Lady Margaret Douglas

From New York Times best-selling author and acclaimed historian Alison Weir comes the first biography of Mary Douglas, the beautiful, cunning niece of Henry VIII of England who used her sharp intelligence and covert power to influence the succession after the death of Elizabeth I.

Captive Queen: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine

Renowned for her highly acclaimed and bestselling British histories, Alison Weir has in recent years made a major impact on the fiction scene with her novels about Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey. In this latest offering, she imagines the world of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the beautiful twelfth-century woman who was queen of France until she abandoned her royal husband for the younger man who would become king of England.

Young and Damned and Fair: The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII

Written with an exciting combination of narrative flair and historical authority, this interpretation of the tragic life of Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, breaks new ground in our understanding of the very young woman who became queen at a time of unprecedented social and political tension and whose terrible errors in judgment quickly led her to the executioner's block.

The Life of Elizabeth I

The New York Times best-selling author of The Six Wives of Henry VIII and The War of the Roses, historian Alison Weir crafts fascinating portraits of England’s infamous House of Tudor line. Here Weir focuses on Elizabeth I, also known as the Virgin Queen, who ascended to the throne at age 25 and never married, yet ruled for 44 years and steered England into its Golden Age.

The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women: A Social History

The Tudor period conjures up images of queens and noblewomen in elaborate court dress, of palace intrigue and dramatic politics. But if you were a woman, it was also a time when death during childbirth was rife, when marriage was usually a legal contract, not a matter for love, and the education you could hope to receive was minimal at best. Yet the Tudor century was also dominated by powerful and dynamic women in a way that no era had been before.

The Confessions of Catherine de Medici: A Novel

In this brilliantly imagined novel, acclaimed author C. W. Gortner brings Catherine to life in her own voice, allowing us to enter the intimate world of a woman whose determination to protect her family’s throne and realm plunged her into a lethal struggle for power. From the fairy-tale chateaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, this is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen.

Sisters of Treason

Early in Mary Tudor's turbulent reign, Lady Catherine and Lady Mary Grey are reeling after the brutal execution of their elder seventeen-year-old sister, Lady Jane Grey, and the succession is by no means stable. In Sisters of Treason, Elizabeth Freemantle brings these young women to life in a spellbinding Tudor tale of love and politics.

Wolf Hall

Tudor England. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is charged with securing his divorce. Into this atmosphere of distrust comes Thomas Cromwell - a man as ruthlessly ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages.

Henry VIII: King and Court

This magnificent biography of Henry VIII is set against the cultural, social and political background of his court - the most spectacular court ever seen in England - and the splendour of his many sumptuous palaces. An entertaining narrative packed with colourful description and a wealth of anecdotal evidence, but also a comprehensive analytical study of the development of both monarch and court during a crucial period in English history.

The Vatican Princess: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia

Glamorous and predatory, the Borgias fascinated and terrorized 15th-century Renaissance Italy, and Lucrezia Borgia, beloved daughter of the pope, was at the center of the dynasty's ambitions. Slandered as a heartless seductress who lured men to their doom, was she in fact the villainess of legend, or was she trapped in a familial web, forced to choose between loyalty and survival?

After a violent coup in the United States overthrows the Constitution and ushers in a new government regime, the Republic of Gilead imposes subservient roles on all women. Offred, now a Handmaid tasked with the singular role of procreation in the childless household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost everything, even her own name.

The King's Grace

All that history knows of Grace Plantagenet is that she was an illegitimate daughter of Edward IV and one of two attendants aboard the funeral barge of his widowed queen. Thus, she was half sister of the famous young princes, who, when this story begins in 1485, had been housed in the Tower by their uncle, Richard III, and are presumed dead. But in the 1490s, a young man appears at the courts of Europe claiming to be Richard, duke of York, seeking to claim his rightful throne from England's first Tudor king.

The Tudors

For the first time in decades, here, in a single volume, is a fresh look at the fabled Tudor dynasty, comprising some of the most enigmatic figures ever to rule a country. Acclaimed historian G. J. Meyer reveals the flesh-and-bone reality in all its wild excess.

The Children of Henry VIII

New York Times best-selling author Alison Weir is one of the most popular chroniclers of British and European royal history. In this fascinating book she sheds light on the scheming, backstabbing and brutality that plagued England after Henry VIII’s death. Filled with remarkable and sometimes shocking details, The Children of Henry VIII is an arresting narrative that brings the past to life and infuses it with all the flair of a riveting novel.

Publisher's Summary

When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of 14, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled by the king, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family's ambitious plots as the king's interest begins to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne. Then Mary knows that she must defy her family and her king, and take her fate into her own hands.

A rich and compelling tale of love, sex, ambition, and intrigue, The Other Boleyn Girl introduces a woman of extraordinary determination and desire who lived at the heart of the most exciting and glamorous court in Europe and survived by following her own heart.

How did I not notice that this was an ABRIDGED version?!? I despise abridgements! This book was really good though and the result is that now I want the unabridged version. If I can't find it on audiobook I will buy it to read. A combination of this book and the Showtime drama "The Tudors" has gotten me terribly interested in the life of Henry VIII. I have never liked trashy romance novels partly because they just make me feel stupid but here is one I can feel good about since it is somewhat educational! Too bad it is the ABRIDGED version!

This book is fantastic, and once again I wish it were not abridged. This is a great listen after "The Constant Princess", which is almost a continuation of the first story, but told by Mary Boleyn instead of Queen Catherine. I liked the narrator of this audiobook much more than the last one. I preferred Ann Boleyn to Mary in the beginning of the book. But you see the cruelness and blind ambition of Ann as the book goes on, and it is Mary who really grows up into a decent person even if she is a Howard-Boleyn by blood and breeding. I would recommend this book highly.

This book was thoroughly entertaining. The reader was excellent. I RARELY buy abridged audio books but this book was the monthly selection of my bookclub and I didn't want to attend without even knowing the plot. I am glad I listened to the book, but I can't help but wonder what I missed! I agree with an earlier post that Mary ended up being the most likeable of the Boleyn girls. If you like historical fiction, you will enjoy this book.

Now I am a big history buff, after I read this book. I don't buy the incest stuff either, though that is what (as I understand it) the hysterical witch hunt around Anne was suggesting. PG does extrapolate rather a lot from a little I think (she does the same again re Anne of Cleves' home life in The Boleyn Inheritance, which I thought was a rather better book and certainly gives an horrific insight into the paranoia at court in the latter days of Henry VIII's reign when he was a bloated monster, not at all the pretty boy of The Tudors).
I liked this at the time, and thought McElhone was great, though I did find the incest stuff a bit wince making (but had that reaction to reading it too.) Haven't seen the big screen version yet, but would be interested to compare.
overall i loved the book and i ended up getting other sequels related to this book.

This version of audio for The Other Boleyn Girl is abridged with approx. 6 ½ hours of story. There is another version, unabridged, with approx.26 hours of story. Needless to say, the difference in time commitment to this story made the abridged version more appealing. The story started out pretty slow and was much different than the movie…I must say that the narrator did a great job considering the many different characters. I don’t know about you, but the narrator makes a huge difference for me and this one was excellent. By the end of the book, I wanted more, which for me is a sign of a great book. I would recommend this book, it’s definitely a fun listen.